Come to the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker

Hey folks, This blog is going to remain up, but I won't be adding to it any more. To say there's some baggage here would be the great white shark of understatements.

HOWEVER...I do not wish to leave you all alone to face the End Times with nothing to read. So come on over to the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, and get the updates on me, my life, the dog, and all of the ins and out of bunker life. Lots of stuff going on and things to see. Please join me. 

What We Mean When We Say “Super Hero Fatigue”

Nothing quite sets me off like the phrase “Super Hero Fatigue.” It’s a passive-aggressive way for movie reviewers and online content providers to turn their nose up at a genre that they either don’t like, don’t get, or some combination of the two. I’m not unsympathetic; we’ve all gotten fed up with a trend or a fad before the media, or your little sister, or the world was ready to let go of it, and we’ve all suffered through “the Spring Break song” of the year or the Twilight Saga or whatever it was with a mixture of benign hate and stoic indifference. I get it.

But if you don’t stop talking about super hero fatigue, I’m going to sock your nose. 

When you talk about “super hero fatigue” you may mean that you’re bored with the movies, but what I hear when you say that is, “I want these movies to go away.” Well, I don’t. If you don’t like them—if they aren’t for you—that’s fine, whatever, go peddle your ducks elsewhere. But to my mind, they’ve only really been good for, what, 9 years, now? Not even a full decade? Why do you hate fun? Who hurt you? And why would you waste good ink complaining about it when there’s hundreds of other movies, obscure and neglected, that you can champion as only a hipster can?

Now that you know what this blog post is going to be about, feel free to chalk it up as one of those “Old Man Yells at Cloud” posts. Or just skip right down to the end and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. You will be wrong, of course, and do you know why?

I did the math. I’ve got the numbers. I have data, you smug bastards. So let me explain to you folks—many of whom are under the age of 35—why you need to stop kvetching about the Super Hero Movie Genre and let us Generation X folks have our moment.

My Thesis
The modern comic book movie didn’t officially begin until the year 1999 with the premiere of The Matrix. While it was not connected to a comic series or based on established characters, the visual effects in the film handily duplicated the fast-action and ballet-like fighting that was a staple of comic books. The “Bullet Time” effects in particular showcased key scenes before, during and after their execution, mimicking a “panel” in a comic.

Note: I did not include Blade (1998) in this calculation because, while Blade’s comic book origins are well-established, he is a vampire who hunts vampires. His speed and strength did not need any further explanation. The movie going audience understood that from the get-go and so no additional story was needed to justify his “super powers.” Nevertheless, Blade does count as a comic book movie, as we’ll later see.

Special effects, and in particular computer-generated effects, have been a staple of the movie industry since Jurassic Park in 1993. However, it took nearly a decade to create computer-generated imagery that was able to meet the rigorous demands of a super hero film. Even movies that were deemed mediocre as films boasted incredible special effects and images that were simply not possible prior to the 21^st century.

Of course, that didn’t keep Hollywood from trying. The 20^th century has some of the best-and worst-super hero movies and television shows to ever exist. And I should know. I watched all of it. Yeah, that’s right, all of it. Look, I was an early and avid fan of super heroes. I was reading comics at the age of 5. Collecting them by age 8. And—here’s the kicker—I was born in 1969, which puts me at ground zero for everything that was to come along and, little by little, improve with each try. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that if you were born anytime after 1960, then you probably feel as I do, if you’re as big a fan of comics and super heroes as me. If you were born in the seventies, you’re probably on board with me. But if you were born in the mid to late 1980s...you may just be the person I’m talking to when I say, “shut up your flapping food hole” about Super Hero fatigue.

I Made a Chart
You can download a PDF of my full chart here.  It took me a while to put together, since this is not my strong suit. But I wanted to back up my feelings, my impressions, and my memories with some actual hard data points. So there it is, in its full glory, if you’re so inclined. Also, I graded every single super hero movie and project from A to F. That's what we're all going to fight about. I just know it. So go ahead and download it now and look it over and get ready to tell me why I'm the biggest idiot the world has ever produced because I didn't like your favorite movie from 1997. For the rest of you, I’m going to skip ahead and talk briefly about what I uncovered.

Most of you know that modern super heroes debuted in 1938 with the first appearance of Superman in Action Comics. Batman followed in 1939, and Captain America and Wonder Woman came after that in 1940. Most of you know about the Golden Age of Super Hero Comics, and you may even know about the Silver Age and the creation of Marvel Comics in 1961 with The Fantastic Four, followed quickly by The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man.  

Marvel and DC continue to rule the roost when it comes to super heroes and their related properties. There have been (and continue to be) other publishers of comics, but it’s hard to topple characters who’ve been around for 60, 70, and 80 or more years. One thing I found interesting was that the 1940s and the 1960s, both times of great interest in comic book super heroes, each had their own attempts to capitalize on that success in movies or TV.

The 1940s were the era of the serials, or “Cliffhangers,” wherein a story was broken up into weekly chapters, each running around 15 minutes, and exhibited as part of a larger Saturday matinee program. These serials were sometimes re-edited into feature length films. The special effects for these cliffhangers was shoestring, at best, but the stunt work and action were often top-notch.

The 1950s gave rise to atomic age science fiction, and also opened up circuit distribution for independent film companies and “packagers.” Thus, quality varied widely, with some of the movies skirting the edge of outright exploitation.

Television was a fixture in the 1960s, and when Marvel came along, it saw an opportunity not on the silver screen but on the little screen. As early as 1966, a number of animated properties were developed—aimed at kids, of course—featuring the Marvel super heroes. The 1960s also continued the Science Fiction trend, but new fears were creeping into the zeitgeist. Planet of the Apes is the standout from this decade. Also, the studio system was breaking down.

The 1970s were essentially the end of the 1960s. Some speculative films were out, but there were more Godzilla movies than super hero fare on the big screen. It wasn’t until Star Wars changed the game in terms of what could be done onscreen that things started to change—but not until the 1980s. However, Marvel—perhaps emboldened by its success with animated properties, made the bewildering decision to take some of its beloved characters and turn them into lackluster live-action properties. Only Donner's Superman (starring Christopher Reeve) in 1978 could save us from such mediocrity, and set the bar so high that it became the standard for decades on How to Make a Super Hero Movie.  

1980s were a heyday for fantasy films, embracing the new technologies created by ILM such as blue screen technology and optical compositing as soon as it was invented. Most of the time, the technology was badly applied, or worse, applied quite well to bolster terrible films. Marvel never really got its legs under it, doubling down on projects like Incredible Hulk TV movies and trying to launch David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury. DC didn’t do much better, with the Superman films rapidly declining in quality, each one dumber than the last. Again, a last minute save by Tim Burton invigorated Batman for a new generation. 

Never forget. This is why we fight.

The 1990s tried their hardest to deliver, but the technology was just out of reach of the subject matter. To make matters worse, decades of bad super heroes, campy super heroes, and corny super heroes had muddied the waters. The nadir of this era was the much maligned and rightly so Batman and Robin, an intentional salute and celebration of the 1966 Batman TV show that everyone tried so hard to overcome. That the show has found a new audience now is not the point; there are finally enough interpretations of Batman in the zeitgeist that a super silly Batman isn't the only thing drawing water, nor is it the only view of super heroes out there. Back when it was the only note anyone could blow on a horn, it was tiresome in the extreme. The independent comics produced a  few exceptions, such as The Mask, which made the rubbery computer animation work for it, and The Rocketeer, which matched nice special effects with a sincere attempt at getting the character right, made the failures around it that much worse. Only the quantum leap forward with CGI at the end of the decade made what came next possible.

The 2000s can inarguably be considered the new Golden Age of comic book movies, now that technology finally caught up to the rigorous demands of the stories being told. However, the old modes of storytelling and the insistence on telling the same kind of super hero story—now a mash-up of the Superman (1978) and Batman (1989) plot would continue to plague many of the projects for most of the decade. When Iron Man started the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008, it put into place one of the most ambitious world-building and franchise building exercises ever attempted on such a large scale, and it paid off handsomely.

2010 to 2017 is not a complete decade, but I would go so far as to argue that today’s comic book movies and television shows have supplanted the comic book themselves in terms of the place they occupy in popular culture—as a mirror of the times, and also as a reaction to current events. This is especially true in the politically-charged decade of the 2010s. The success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe only highlights the ongoing struggles of Warner Brothers to get its proprietary DC Universe characters on the big screen.

My Methodology
First, I counted only the Marvel, DC, and Independent movies and TV shows that were based on actual comics. There were a couple of exceptions, as you’ll see if you look at the PDF above. Mostly for multi-media properties such as The Green Hornet, The Lone Ranger, and The Phantom. It was only a few extra numbers, as you’ll see. I also only counted TV shows once, even if they were on for multiple seasons.

I left off animation because it would have ballooned the super hero list. Also, because 95% of the animation was aimed at children. There’s a separate metric for that, in that all of that kiddie fare drove the discourse down and made super heroes infantile and their fans man-children for much of the 20^th century. But that’s not what I was looking at. For what it’s worth, I did choose to count the live-action Saturday Morning Shows like Shazam! and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. I’m nothing if not capricious.

Then I went back and counted all of the movies and TV, aimed at American audiences, that were super heroes who were not actually comic book based. This is where stuff like The Greatest American Hero (1981-83) got counted. M.A.N.T.I.S. (1995). Heroes (2006-2010). Hancock (2008). You get the idea. 

In order to give these numbers some meaning, I used the combined Fantasy and Science Fiction genres to help “classify” them, since they have, up until very recently, been considered part of that genre (well, sometimes they get placed in action/adventure, but I maintain that the special effects needed to get super heroes to work on film is equal to an F/SF film, so this was a more accurate grouping).  I looked at the number of “real” or Top Shelf (Marvel, DC, etc) movies and TV shows by decade, and compared them to the number of Non-Marvel, DC, etc. movies and also F/SF movies by decade to generate a percentage within that larger group. Here are the results of that.

Super Hero Movie Stats

YEARS By Decade	Marvel, DC & Indy films	Other “Super Hero” films	Other F/SF films	% BY DECADE
1940s
	14	1	37	36%
1950s
	6	2	164	4%
1960s
	3	1	115	2.5%
1970s
	7	5	123	5%
1980s
	11	7	196	5%
1990s
	24	16	194	11%
2000s
	33	5	190	17%
2010s
	48*	4*	159*	29%*

* an ongoing statistic. Tallies are not final.

Interpreting the Data
I deliberately pushed “Other Super Hero” films into a separate category because, almost without fail, they only added to the signal to noise ratio in getting good and true representations of these characters onscreen. In retrospect, I should have included another column for animated series, as it’s very important from the 1960s on, as keeping the characters (albeit simplified) in the public eye. But what I’m driving at here is this: Condorman did nothing to sell the public on the idea that super heroes were anything other than kiddy fare, played for laughs. And that was released by Walt Disney. Captain Nice, another live-action Saturday morning Yuk-fest, was even more stupid. This all relates back to the Batman TV series, of course. It was played for laughs and it was so incredibly successful, so fast, that they couldn’t monetize it fast enough. It was a legitimate pop culture phenomenon. And because it was so successful, that’s the well Hollywood went back to for a full decade when Super Heroes came up. That’s why Doc Savage looked the way it did.

That’s not to say that the major comic book companies didn’t shoot themselves in the foot, either. For decades prior to the premiere of X-Men in 2000, Marvel comics fans groaned every time a new TV series or movie was announced, because they just Couldn’t Get It Right. Ever. In some cases, it was like they weren’t even trying. The Incredible Hulk was popular, for what it was, but it really bore no resemblance to the comics. There were no super villains, nothing to really set The Hulk in the Marvel Universe. Ferrigno in green body paint was expensive enough. And he stormed through Styrofoam walls, broke balsa wood tables, and even pushed cars around with his Hulk-like strength, but it was a far, far cry from “Hulk Smash.” Later, in the 1980s, they revived the Hulk for TV movies co-starring Thor and Daredevil, and they were the sorriest, most inane versions of the characters I’ve ever seen—and I’ve seen them all, even the pirated unreleased TV pilots and movies that have been shelved over the years because they sucked so bad.

And What about DC? They were defined by the success of Superman (1978) and Batman (1989), this is true, but no one ever brings up Swamp Thing (1981). Or the appallingly campy Legends of the Superheroes (1979) TV special, hosted by Ed McMahon. Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman was initially as great as something with a nineteen-dollar special effects budget could be, but as quick as they could, they brought her into the modern era, where everyone wore pantsuits, and all of the aliens were from a future or a planet that used crystals and a lot of lycra. No, there’s enough blame to go around. By the 1970s, the ’66 Batman TV show was in syndication, and it was a daily dose of high camp caped crusader tomfoolery, and we all watched it, because we had no other options, but we also all wondered why Adam West and Burt Ward were nothing—at all—like the Batman and Robin in the comics. 1970’s Denny O’Neill/Neal Adams Batman was solving murders. Adam West was doing the Batusi in the What a Way to Go-Go. Talk about a disconnect.

At first glance, it sure does seem like the number of super hero projects has increased. I think it’s interesting to note that in terms of percentages, 2010 and 1940 are the closest in comparative sizes, and I think this is due to a similar rise in interest. Comics are no longer hermetic and inaccessible. Super heroes are everywhere, and they function, more or less, like how they work in the comics. This is a huge leap forward, and one that may contribute to the decline (and maybe even the death) of American super hero comics as the characters move into this new storytelling medium en masse.

These are good numbers to look at, but there’s one more number, very important, that I want to talk about. Here’s where we venture, and quite correctly, into “You Young Kids” territory. I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves, for now.

Number of Top-Tier Super Hero movies prior to 2000: 65
Number of SF and “other” super hero movies combined, prior to 2000: 861
Percentage of Top Tier Super hero films prior to 2000:  7.5%
Number of Top-Tier Super Hero movies after 2000: 81
Number of SF and “other” super hero movies combined, after 2000: 358
Percentage of Top Tier Super hero films after 2000:  23%

What we have here is not only the establishment of super hero movies as a genre, but also a clear line in the sand for people born from 1960 to 1985 and people born after 1985. It has a lot to do with when you started consuming super heroes. If you were born after a certain age, you just aren’t in a position to understand why it’s important to Generation X that we now have cool movies that don’t insult anyone’s intelligence and that millions of people are interested in and oh yeah, also star Captain Freaking America. You don’t understand, and I don’t know that you’ll ever have the empathy to do so.

A Tale of Two Marks
To prove my point, I’m going to create two identical Marks. Mark from Earth-1 and Mark from Earth-2. For clarity’s sake, I will eschew with the standard time deviation that is problematic with the multiverse and make Earth-1 Mark older than Earth-2 Mark. I know that there’s a small percentage of DC comics fans who’s heads just exploded, but I don’t care. This isn’t for them.
Mark from Earth-1 was born in 1969. He was born at a time when there wasn’t Cable TV, and there wasn’t VHS recorders (and certainly not any DVD players). Mark really likes super heroes, and thankfully, there’s plenty of them around. He just has to ride his bike all over to the four or five convenience stores, drug stores, and super markets that each have a limited selection of Marvel and DC comics. Earth-1 Mark has to smile politely when his grandparents bring him a handful of “funny books” to read; stacks of Archie and Ritchie Rich that do nothing to satisfy his itch to leap tall buildings in a single bound and save the world from the mad menace of The Joker.

Earth-1 Mark is eight years old when Star Wars premieres in 1977. Up until that time, he’s been watching cartoons (of course) and Wonder Woman on television. He’s also been watching Shazam! every Saturday morning. Most of the time, their super heroics are about this same; I can’t count the number of car bumpers they both lifted up to prevent criminals from just driving away from them.

But all is not gloom and doom for Earth-1 Mark. Even though he doesn’t have the streaming Internet, or even cable, he has regular TV and radio. On the AM stations, at night, he can listen to old time radio programs like The Shadow. He’s got Power Records, actual comics with actors speaking the lines. Those are pretty cool, and do not shy away from the subject matter. And on TV, he’s privy to just about every super hero program from 1940 to 1968. Shows like Batman ran in the afternoons, after school. He watches all of it, including the Saturday morning cartoons like Batman and The Super Friends, and Space Ghost. Even after Star Wars debuts, it take years between projects. There is no Internet to instantly spread the latest rumors and gossip; just controlled press releases that state Superman II is now filming and will be premiere in 1980. Three years away. 

You were supposed to protect us from this, Stan! We

trusted you! How could you let this happen? Do you

have any idea how much shit we took for this stuff?

Earth-2 Mark? He was born in 1985. He also loves comics. His mom takes him to the comic book shop every week to buy his latest books. He still has to avoid the other kids who might make fun of him, but there are other people his age who also go to the comic book store, and they band together, like Sand People, to hide their true numbers.

In the meantime, Earth-1 Mark can tide himself over with The Incredible Hulk, on TV, and watch Bill Bixby turn into Lou Ferrigno twice each episode. He can watch Spider-Man, on TV, climb up walls and shoot nylon cord out of a webshooter the size of a disco ball and watch it magically curl around a bad guy to tie him up. He can watch Captain America, on TV, drive a motorcycle while wearing a giant blue helmet and throw a clear plastic shield around like a Frisbee.  He can watch Ed McMahon yuk it up with third-rate comedians in ill-fitting super hero Spandex, on TV. And he can deftly avoid the bigger kids in school who love to make fun of him because comics are stupid and for babies and nothing in the larger media is proving the bullies wrong at this point.

Earth-2 Mark is 6 years old when Jurassic Park comes out. It’s the first time he’s been thrilled and terrified at a movie, because the dinosaurs looked so very real! Later, in his early twenties, he’ll decry the animation as clumsy and stupid, but for now, he’s duly impressed. Mostly, though, he’s into Batman: The Animated Series and the X-Men cartoons.

Earth-2 Mark’s dad took him to see Batman Forever but he didn’t remember it, so he rented the VHS tape and rewatched it at his home. All of his super hero movies are on video tape, and he can watch them whenever he wants to, now. But the movie he really remembers seeing in the theater was Batman & Robin, and it blew his young mind (he watched it years later, as an adult, and was bummed to find out that it didn’t hold up, not in the least). He also saw Spawn that same year by sneaking into the theater, and it was super cool, because he got Spawn #1 and it’s now worth $20 and it’s only going to go up after the movie comes out, right?

When the first X-Men movie drops in 2000, Earth-2 Mark is in line. And he comes out of it energized. Finally! He thinks. We’ve been waiting for, like, ten years for this. It was stupid of them to wait so long. They could have and should have done this years ago. In fact, they should have done X-Men instead of Blade. Now, if only they’d put Colossus in the next X-Men movie...
Now it’s 2017. Earth-2 Mark is 29 years old. He’s been to college. He’s gotten a degree in general studies. He now works for an online content provider, and he writes pithy and succinct think-pieces about popular culture. But he’s bored, now, because they still aren’t making the movies he wants them to make, and he’s so fed up with all of these super hero movies, because, come on, this is so 1997, people, amiright? I mean, it was fun when I was younger, but after watching 12 Years a Slave, he simply cannot go back to movies that don’t elucidate or instruct in some meaningful way.

When Captain America (Finally) Throws His Mighty Shield
Okay, that’s enough of that. My point, in case you missed it, was this: for my generation, super heroes on film and TV were rare, hard to access, and nearly always not worth the terrible effort it took to find it in the first place. For so long, the special effects necessary to sell these stories was sorely lacking. When the special effects got better, efforts to translate the material suffered because of the prevailing attitude that comics were either A. Stupid; B. Infantile; or C. Both. The only thing people could do was to try and duplicate the success of the Batman TV show, with terrible results every time.

I really cannot stress to you just how bad all of it was. And I’m not saying, “compared to now,” either. I mean, bad back then. Case in point: Captain America.

I love Captain America. He’s one of my all-time favorite super heroes. Cool character, cool costume, cool powers, cool friends, cool everything. I was a seventies kid, and the bicentennial was huge. I had a copy of Captain America’s Bicentennial battles. I had the Captain America and the Falcon Power Records Book and Record set. I had the Captain America pocket books full-color reprint. Cap was my guy.

So when I found out there was a clilffhanger serial, featuring Captain America, and made during the 1940s, when it was cool to punch Nazis, I spent years tracking it down...and when I found it...ooh boy. It’s not good. Dick Purcell? Really? It’s just not. Cliffhangers are kind of cheesy and bad, but this poor sap in the cap suit didn’t even have a shield! I mean, Come On. How hard is that? There's nothing in the serial that is unique to Captain America. He could have been called "Bund-Puncher McGurk" and it would have made zero difference to the plot or the story. 
Thankfully, in the 1970s, there were these old limited animation shows (and I do mean limited) featuring the Marvel Super Heroes. One of which was Captain America, which came with a nifty theme song that I know you’ve heard people sing before. These cartoons were done in the mid-sixties, at a New York studio, with crude animation and clumsy voice acting, but the art for the cartoons was taken directly from the comics themselves. They look almost exactly like the Motion Comics of today.

This was not cool. Not even during the heyday of
Evel Knievel Fever. It sucked and we all knew it.

In the late 1970s, these two Captain America TV movies were shown, starring Reb Brown (don’t ask me) and featuring a Captain America who drove a motorcycle with a giant clear plastic shield that snapped onto the front of the bike like a windscreen. To promote cycle safety, Cap also had a giant blue motorcycle helmet with white wings painted on the side. Not even Christopher Lee as the bad guy makes these things worth watching. They are wrist-slitting awful.

By then, Stan was in Los Angeles, ostensibly heading up Marvel Entertainment, making movie and TV deals for all of us True Believers and telling us about it in his monthly column in the comics. That lasted until the early 1990s, but by then, we had the direct market and some comic book magazines that kept us up-to-date on the latest gossip—like the brand-new Captain America movie coming out!

Featuring an Italian Red Skull, a rubber suit that looked okay, until Cap turned his head and the molded rubber ears that were part of the mask he wore flattened against his head and looked ridiculous. This Cap is untrained, and flown into battle with one mission, holding a solid shield (thank you!), and he promptly gets kidnapped by the Italian Red Skull and strapped to a rocket that drops him into the Arctic Sea and freezes him. He’s thawed out in the modern world, only to find the Italian Red Skull is still alive, and they have one more fight and Cap wins.

Did I mention to you that this movie wasn’t originally released in America? It was so bad, it ended up going straight to video—right about the same time that Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four movie was being shelved for sucking so bad.

So, there’s Captain America’s media history. One of the easiest (you’d think) characters to pull off: no flight, no crazy powers like eye beams or weather control. Just running, jumping, punching, and throwing a shield—stuff that special effects could have and should have been able to pull off since the early 1980s.

That’s why Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) is such a big deal. Not only did they get all of the little stuff right—the running, the jumping, the punching, and the shield—they spent a shit-ton of money making Steve Rogers look like a 98 pound weakling for the first third of the movie. When Cap throws his shield and it ricochets off of two bad guys and knocks them out, it looks exactly like how he does it in the comics. Chris Evans plays him like a conflicted Boy Scout, which is Cap all over from the 1960s to the 2010s. And the Red Skull was German, and a Nazi. Don’t ask me why it took so long. But understand this: I never thought they’d do it. After seeing them trying, and failing, so often, from the age of 7 to me in my early 40s, I just didn’t think they’d ever do it right. Not until Iron Man in 2008. Until then, I had zero hope.

By then, it was clear that the Geeks had Inherited the Earth. And apparently, what we want is good comic book movies and TV shows. Is that so wrong? We’d been denied them, all while the rest of you got romantic comedies, westerns, gangster movies, war movies, and love stories. And we had to take what we could get, because no one took comics seriously for decades. But there came a point when comics weren’t stigmatized. It started in the mid-to-late 1980s with the publication of a number of comics and graphic novels aimed at adults rather than kids.

Somewhere in the mid-to-late 1990s, comics stopped being popular culture’s whipping boy. By then, it was okay to like comics, and the movies that came out, while of widely varied quality, at least looked and behaved like comic book super heroes. It wasn’t until members of Generation X started making these movies that they underwent a tonal change.

Post 2000 super hero movies are still a mixed bag, right up until 2008, when Marvel dropped Iron Man on an unsuspecting world. The birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was one of the most ambitious experiments of all time; make six super hero movies just so you can make a seventh one. Planning that far ahead was backwards thinking to the rest of Hollywood, but it worked like a charm. And judging from the box office numbers, it continues to work.  

Most of us old-timers chuckle at how the fortunes have reversed. There was a time that we preferred the DC movies and hated everything Marvel threw at us. Those days, thankfully, are long gone. But it’s worth noting that our interest hasn’t waned, just because we’re older. There’s still a lot to answer for. Decades of mistreatment, in fact. Even if we scrape off the first seven years of the 21^st century (throwing out Spider-Man and X-Men along with Elektra and Catwoman), even if we just start keeping score in 2008, that’s just ten years of jaw-dropping sights and sounds, stuff we never thought we’d ever see—such as an actual Captain America movie that wasn’t completely stupid—ten years, compared to, what? Thirty to forty years of insulting our intelligence, denigrating something we love almost unconditionally, mishandling the characters and concepts that have sustained generations of fans, beloved characters that are larger than life and mean something personal and sacred to so many folks...four decades of Hollywood screwing it up and making it worse.

This is our time. We earned these movies, with our money, with our loyalty, with our hearts. We kept these flames alive, and we kept the comic book industry afloat, and we championed these things to our friends, our family, our boyfriends and girlfriends—to anyone who would listen. It cost us social currency, relationships, arguments and fights—scars we carry to this day in one way or another. This is our hard-earned and just reward, in this new Era of Geek Culture.

They may not all be good, and some of them aren’t. But this is a relative and highly subjective criteria we’re talking about, here. Take the worst Marvel Cinematic Universe movie you can think of—whichever the worst one in your mind is. Now, go compare that to anything that came out in the 1970s and 1980s. Go on, do it. I’ll wait. Pick the worst DC movie of the last ten years and go compare that to anything in the 1990s. See if it suddenly, magically, doesn’t start to look amazing and wonderful, by comparison.

See, it’s all relative. And it should be. We’re talking about a sub-genre of fantasy and science fiction movies, here. As popular now as the spy genre was in the 1960s or the western was in the 1940s and 1950s. It will very likely slow down on its own, due to economic pressures and interests, since Hollywood has a time-honored tradition of self-sabotage and over-saturation. But for right now, Super Heroes are only about one fifth of the overall number of fantasy and science fiction movies being released in the last ten years.

So, how about you let us have this moment and stop trying to take it away?

My ArmadilloCon 2016 Schedule

For those of you who can't get enough of the ol' Finnster, here's my ArmadilloCon schedule for next week. Of note is the History-Making Gentlemen Nerds Podcast with live-audience participation, on Saturday at 10 AM. Now, I know it's the first panel of the day, and we wouldn't dream of sending you out into the world without coffee and doughnuts, right? Well, how about this: You bring the beverage, and we'll bring the doughnuts. Cool? We'll all be in the same room for the first time ever, and we WILL be talking to the audience. Come be a part of the magic of podcasting, won't you?

And for the rest of the festivities, here you go:

Tarzan

Fri 6:00 PM-7:00 PM Ballroom D

Allen, Mark Finn, Klaw*, Lansdale, Williams

A history and appreciation of Tarzan, including, of course, the 2016 movie. 

Comic Books You Should Be Reading

Fri 10:00 PM-11:00 PM Ballroom F

Benjamin, Mark Finn, Humphrey, Porter*, Rogers

What comics should we be reading, and why? 

Gentleman Nerds Podcast 

Sat 10:00 AM-11:00 AM Southpark A

de Orive, Mark Finn, M.A. Finn, Fotinos

The Gents gather to create a podcast discussing a variety of nerdy topics. 

Reading

Sat 1:00 PM-1:30 PM Conference Center

Mark Finn

Game of Thrones - What's New, What's Coming

Sat 4:00 PM-5:00 PM Ballroom E

Mark Finn, Goldsmith, Picacio, Rountree, Swendson, Wilson*

Our panelists discuss the latest season of Game of Thrones, and any hot rumours as to what may be on the way. 

Fannish Feud

Sat 5:00 PM-6:00 PM Ballroom D

Mark Finn*, Bobo, Wilson, Cherry, Landon, Martinez, 

Come see our Fans vs. Pros game show event. Let's play the feud!

In Defense of Amazing Spider-Man 2

I drove to Wichita Falls on Saturday, about an hour’s drive for me, in order to participate in Free Comic Book Day. In years past, I would make sure that we had copies of whatever movie-tie in comic they were promoting on hand at the theater to give away to the children at the matinee show. This always went over well, with a mixture of excitement and confusion. Parents would either get excited for the kids: “Look, Baker, Look Archer! Comic books! Wow, that’s neat! Can you say thank you to the nice, strange man?” Or they would look at me with dull indifference, take the comic book, and maybe the kids would read it later, maybe not. I didn’t care. I did it for me.

I haven't read it yet. I'm just glad
Doctor Octopus is no longer
skinwalking in Peter Parker's body.

As I looked over this year’s offerings at two different stores, I noticed that I had absolutely no interest in anything on the table. Not even for free. This didn’t bother me too much; the point of Free Comic Book Day is not to give me, the lifelong fan, a free comic book, but rather to try and hook new readers into the wonderful world of comics. I believe strongly in comics as a storytelling medium, one that is just as viable and important as movies, books, and audio drama. I don’t care what the kids start out reading, so long as they enjoy it, and keep on reading.

I ended up trying to find something to buy, instead—after all, that’s what Free Comic Book Day is designed to do: get consumers in the store and have them consume. I spent about a half-hour, looking for something to take home. I tried, very hard, to find something to interest myself. Anything, really; it didn’t have to be super heroes. Granted, I wasn’t at Austin Books, so my selection was limited, but after pawing through a dozen Spider-Man trade paperbacks and being either thoroughly unfamiliar with the storyline, or profoundly uninterested in the storyline (or both), I gave up. I tried this with several other “go-to” favorite characters of mine, from Batman to Captain America. In the end, I picked up the newest re-launch of Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man #1, with Peter Parker in the driver’s seat. $5.99. Jeez Louise. I also picked up a couple of action figures on clearance. Dr. Strange! Always good, never bad. They were symbolic purchases, obviously. In another time, I would have had to cut myself off, or do without some groceries.

Why aren't you reading this comic?
Go. Now. Buy it. Love it.

All of this made me wonder briefly if I’d outgrown comics. That’s ridiculous, I thought. I have a number of comics I’m reading currently: Fables, Hellboy, Conan, Red Sonja (by Gail Simone), Black Science, Bandette, Doc Savage, Velvet, Hawkeye by Matt Fraction and, unbelievably, Batman 66 by Jeff Parker sprang instantly to mind as I sat in the car, thinking. I still have favorite creators, for crying out loud! I have good friends in the industry who are turning out great work. That I’ve mostly jumped over to buying trade paperbacks is beside the point. I still even pick up the various individual issues, mostly just to see if I’ll like something or not. If I do, I add it to my trade paperback list.

However, what struck me about the books I still read is the lack of superhero comics from Marvel and DC I’m currently reading. There are a lot of reasons for this, ranging from the fact that I hate their editorial policy, to the fact that I hate every single thing that they are doing to their super hero line. Of the two, Marvel catches far less of my ire. I can see that they are trying creatively to do something different. This ranges from putting a half-black, half Hispanic kid in the Spidey suit to publishing comics with female super heroes that don’t look like the underage strippers and porn stars that DCis currently putting on its comic book covers in an attempt to be “edgy.” It doesn’t mean that I actually like a lot of what Marvel is doing, but that’s because I’m over forty and not part of Marvel’s target demographic right now. I’m not talking about making Marvel more inclusive regarding gender and people of color; that’s great. I’m talking about stuff like Doctor Octopus deciding to take over the body of Spider-Man and run around as him for a while. The X-Men remain as intentionally obtuse and soap operatic as they were back when I was reading them, in the time known as “the Good Old Days,” when Claremont wasn’t off in the weeds and John Byrne wasn’t bug-nuts crazy.

The less I talk about DC comics, the better it’s going to be for my blood pressure. In the immortal words of Peter MacNicol from Ghostbusters 2 when he says, “Everything you are doing is bad. I want you to know this.” I am not even kidding. Don’t even bother to write me and say, “But Mark, you don’t know about yadda yadda yadda!” or “How could you ignore blah blah blah?” No, trust me, it’s all bad. But again, I’m not the target demographic, here. And that’s okay. There are enough older comics out there that I can buy and collect—comics that I always wanted to read and couldn’t, or didn’t, or whatever. I don’t have every single issue of Batman there is. If I really want to keep reading the stuff that I do like, well, there’s nothing stopping me.

This comes on the heels of a good Brian Bendis interview I recently read. Bendis is the current architect of the Marvel Universe, and the Ultimates Universe and the overall tone of Marvel Comics for the past fifteen years or so. In the interview he makes some really good points about recent controversies and conversations, and he furthermore talks about something I’ve always thought Marvel did better than DC and that’s playing the quiet moments between the Earth-shattering conflicts. This idea is an outgrowth of the original Marvel storytelling formula of portraying super heroes with modern problems. Bendis understands this idea especially well, and some of his best efforts (along with writers like Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker) really showcase the idea of creating dynamic stories in the quiet moments.

Bendis also pointed out something about the recent and controversial decision to kill Peter Parker in the Ultimates Universe and replace him with a person of color, Miles Morales. This was his point, and it’s a good one:

When you become the writer of Spider-Man, all of a sudden, every day, every week, every month, someone of color — all different races — comes up to you and tells you, "Spider-Man was my favorite and this is why," and then I hear a version of this story: "My friends, when I was a kid, wouldn't let me be Superman, wouldn't let me be Batman, because of my skin color. But I could   always be Spider-Man, and Spider-Man became my favorite. As a little kid, I didn't even understand why he was my favorite, but it was because anybody could be Spider-Man under that costume, because it was head-to-toe.

Now, I’m all for this, because of three things.

1. From a marketing standpoint, it’s genius. Spider-Man can be anyone under that mask. Why not replace him with someone more indicative of modern-day New York City?

2. Mile Morales in a comic book in no way negates, nor diminishes, nor threatens my 30+ years of reading Peter Parker Spider-Man in the least. Those memories and those physical comics don’t fade away like the photographs in Back to the Future. It’s all still there, for anyone to check out.

3. Having worked on the other side of the comic book counter (and behind desks and art tables) for nearly fifteen years, I can say with authority that white male boys aren’t the only people who read comics. If you tell a kid they can be anything they want to be when they grow up, it’s probably a good idea to have some black, Mexican, Chinese, and Hispanic (and others) superheroes running around in both the male and female varieties.

Doing that may not magically resuscitate the comic book marketplace to its Post WWII heyday, when millions of comics sold on a monthly basis, but it will at least be a viable option for the consumer who is currently reading them. No, not the various neck-beards, man-children, and doughy paste-eaters of the world; I’m talking about the 14-29 year olds of the world. That’s who DC is trying (and failing) to appeal to. That’s who Marvel is trying (and more or less succeeding) to appeal to. That’s the elusive Youth demographic, and if you believe the video gaming world, and Hollywood, it’s worth billions.

If you’ll look closely, there is no neck-beard demographic. Not one that matters, anyway. We are a subset of a subculture, now. We’re a niche in the subculture we helped make. Which brings me to The Amazing Spider-Man 2. From this point on, Spoilers Abound.

Why, yes, this is from the 1977 TV show. And yes, that is
his web-shooter, on the outside of his costume. And
you are correct, it's the only one. And yes, it's also
firing a length of clothesline. You are furthermore
correct: this was terrible. But it was all I had...

You may have figured out by now that I’m a Spider-Man fan. One of the first comics I ever owned was a Marvel Tales Spider-Man reprint, bought for me from a flea market. I grew up in the 70s, which meant I got to watch the 60s Spider-Man cartoons on television, along with the terrible, awful, horrible prime-time TV show in the ‘70s. I watched the Electric Company for years past my recommended viewing age, and why? Because of those Spider-Man live-action skits.  Years later, I raw across some Japanese Spider-Man live-action shows during a hitch on the Underground Tape Railroad. In this show, Spider-Man battles a number of exploding and multiplying ninja warriors until the main bad guy shows up and grows to a spectacular height, at which time Spider-Man summons his sleek roadster and drives up into his giant Shogun Warrior-style robot and battles with the monster using a magic light sword. I kid you not.

There were other animated series, both syndicated and sanctioned by Saturday morning, along with this kind of unspoken truism that it would be just too difficult to pull off a live-action Spider-Man movie. For one thing, there’s the swinging. And then there’s the web-slinging. And the sticking to walls. And how do you do Doc Ock’s arms? Stop-motion animation? Sheesh, fuhgettaboutit.

When it became possible to do super heroics (starting with The Matrix movies), and do them well, the first thing that went into pre-production in the new digital effects age was Spider-Man. Granted, they optioned everything, but notice that Spider-Man came out right on the heels of Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies.

When Spider-Man came out in 2002, I saw it opening day and it brought tears to my eyes. Not because of the special effects, which were terrific, and worked like a charm, and for the first time ever gave us a sense of what being Spider-Man would actually be like. Not because of the casting, which was great. It was because Sam Raimi nailed the emotional core of the character. For all of the concessions they made to the Spider-Man canon—organic webshooters instead of the mechanical ones Peter invents; replacing Gwen Stacey with Mary Jane Watson in the Peter Parker/Harry Osborne/Green Goblin triangle storyline; all of the truncations and adjustments, like the Green Goblin’s helmet mask—you’ve got to remember that this was before Marvel took control of their movies. This was pre-Avengers. This was pre-Marvel Studios making five movies just to set up making a sixth one. It was still a Hollywood movie, not a comic book movie, and for all of the other baggage that came with that, they got one thing right. The most important thing right. The thing that made Spider-Man work on the big screen.

At the end of the movie, Mary Jane tries to tell Peter she realized all along that he was the person she was supposed to be with, and here it is, the one thing Peter has always wanted, right in front of him, and then that voice-over kicks in: “No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, the ones I love will always be the ones who pay.” And he walks away from her. “With great power comes great responsibility. This is my blessing. My curse.” And we cut to Peter as Spider-Man, swinging through Manhattan, and that final swinging sequence still gives me goosebumps. That was Spider-Man, right there, in a nutshell. Raimi understood it and he stuck the landing with that movie. Everything else was just window dressing, meaningless details.

Of course, some of those promises made in the first movie were dashed on the rocks of focus groups and Hollywood heavy-handedness in the second Spider-Man movie. I guess to make up for the fact that he didn’t tell the love interest his secret identity in the first movie, Spider-Man is unmasked in front of a train full of commuters and no one snaps a picture. He also tells Mary Jane, and we get the impression that Robbie Robertson at the Daily Bugle and Aunt May both know he’s Spider-Man. There are a number of extra Hollywood-isms and of course, the ending is so riddled with plot holes it’s almost ridiculous. Doc Ock suddenly wakes up and decides to not be a villain anymore. He drops his sun into the ocean and well, that’s that. It’s not very satisfying on any level, but the movie continues to focus on Peter Parker having a choice between his obligations and being happy. And while the unmasking is problematic, that scene has all of the heart, the drama and the emotional punch of the first movie.

The less said about the third movie, the better. It’s not really even up for consideration, because of the studio insistence to cut short the Green Goblin storyline in favor of some fresh blood: Sandman, who fundamentally changed the point of Spider-Man’s origin in a way that made me howl at the moon, and Venom, hastily shoehorned into the plot so the Youth Demographic, who considered Venom to be “their” villain, would be represented and appeased in equal parts. It was all a mess. Just awful.

You can imagine, when Sony announced they were restarting the Spider-Man franchise, what howls of nerdrage followed. The casting of Andrew Garfield didn’t help, but it sure didn’t hurt. After all, have you seen that guy’s head? It’s the perfect approximation of both Steve Ditko and Todd McFarlane’s artistic take on the character. But that’s neither here nor there.

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) made it very clear that they were updating, a la the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, the franchise to be more “modern” and positioned for the youth of today. See, Peter Parker rides a skateboard and has a hoodie. Modern youth, get it? They were all about keeping it real, except, of course, when they didn’t. Take Gwen Stacey, Peter’s new love interest, literally ripped from the pages of Johnny Romita-era Spider-Man comics, and of course, the death of her father, even if it wasn’t by the Green Goblin. But, since the Lizard was made at Oscorp, one can symbolically see the hand of Norman Osborne behind the whole thing. And we get the impression in the movie that we will see a Green Goblin in the next movie.

The first appearance of Electro. Note the
singular unfilmability of the costume
Electro is wearing. In 1964, this is was
the bomb. in 2014, it's just goofy.

And guess what? Harry Osborne comes back after his father dies and yeah, we get a Green Goblin, after all. Oscorp, in the newest refreshing of the Spider-Man story, is the big corporate bugaboo that is responsible for all of Spider-Man’s major villains. This is because when Steve and Stan were churning these stories out, over fifty years ago, they couldn’t waste time on things like a meaningful origin for villains like Electro. It was a throwaway bad guy. At the end of the original Electro story, in Amazing Spider-Man #9...I’ll let that sink in for a minute...after a two page origin story for how Electro becomes Electro, and the subsequent fight and defeat by Spider-Man, he unmasks the villain and realizes he has no idea who he is. He’s just some guy.

Of course, that was one of the famous documented fights between Lee and Ditko, concerning the origin of the Green Goblin. They made a big deal about him being a mystery man, and Ditko wanted to keep him a nobody—or at least, no one connected to Peter Parker directly. Stan disagreed, and felt that after so many years of teasing this villain out, it needed to be someone close to their main character. This was one of those calls where Stan was right. And the results of that storyline, which culminated in Amazing Spider-Man #121 and #122, some ten years after the first Spider-Man comics began, are among the most famous comic book stories of all time. The Night Gwen Stacy Died is in so many ways the quintessential Spider-Man story; the encapsulation of the whole blessing/curse dichotomy that Raimi tapped into for his first two Spider-Man movies.

I had some real problems with The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), and none of it was casting-related. In fact, it was that the through line on the Spider-Man character, i.e. “with great power comes great responsibility,” was noticeably downplayed for the vast majority of the movie. We were instead expected to care about the fact that this version of Peter Parker actually knew his parents before they disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Never mind that Uncle Ben and Aunt May were literally the coolest set of foster parents any kid could ask for; never mind that even though Peter is a little dorky and shy, he’s not the helpless, hapless and hopeless kid from the first set of movies. Even the fight that leads to the inciting event leading to Uncle Ben’s death feels petty and petulant. And yet, what I did like about the movie was that we had ten years of better movies and super hero shenanigans, which led up to a more active, more talkative, and more comic-book authentic Spider-Man than we’ve ever seen before. In costume, they really got Spidey right.

Thankfully, in Amazing Spider-Man 2, the emotional heart of the story has been addressed, and I was finally able to engage Peter Parker as a character. He’s likeable in this movie, and he and Emma Stone, looking even more like Gwen Stacey from the comics, right down to her vintage wardrobe, have real chemistry and it shows. 

Amazing Spider-Man 2 isn’t perfect. It’s still aimed at the teenagers of the world, and yeah, I’m including anyone under the age of 30 in that group. It’s loud, and everyone talks fast, and there are some great narrative shortcuts taken to tell the story, some of which work, and some that don’t. They skip over the difficulties of Peter and Gwen dating, which works great, but the re-introduction of Harry Osborne feels extremely contrived. Of course, a couple of scenes worth of set-up would have been great, but this movie clocks in at 146 minutes already.

It's hard to imagine how this shocked comic readers
at the time. Its influence on all other dramatic
comic moments since then can't be understated.

In some ways, this movie is the most authentic to the source material. For the first time in five movies, we’ve got the major plot points of one of the most famous Spider-Man stories ever—and yeah, it’s unfortunate that this is the second time we’ve gotten the Green Goblin, but to be fair, Raimi didn’t use him in this way. In fact, he goes out of the way to keep Mary Jane alive. This was back in 2002, when Peter was still married to M.J. in the comics. We’ll see if the third movie will push through. I have my doubts, as they are hinting broadly that they are going to try and field The Sinister Six. Frankly, it’ll be a magic trick if they can pull it off and not have it feel like a night of televised wrestling. I mean, by the end of this film, they’ve got four villains to play with: The Lizard, Electro, The Rhino, and the Green Goblin himself. And you would have had to been in the bathroom to miss Doc Ock’s arms and the Vulture’s wings in the super secret lab in this movie. I shouldn’t pooh pooh it, though. Ten years ago, I thought trying to make an Avengers movie was a stupid idea.

The other thing that I liked—no, loved, about this second outing is that Spidey does Spider-Man stuff and he does it well. From the web-swinging to the fisticuffs, from using his brain scientifically to dealing with kids and the general public. He’s a genuine hero in this movie, and he’s apologetically heroic. That’s nice to see, especially after the nihilistic disaster that was Man of Steel.

I’ve seen some of the reviews, and like most people who write movie reviews for a living, they fail to take into account that super hero movies are by definition spectacles. What I find most insulting is this tone that so many of them have, and kind of righteous indignation that the film is so excessive. I want to drop a couple of stats on you all.

The number of comic book super hero movies made from 1950 to 2000: 28, most of them being Batman and Superman movies.

The number of comic book super hero movies made from 2000 to 2014: 49 super movies to date, with 52 out by the end of the year.

In both cases, these are movies based directly on comics already in existence. It doesn’t account for non-super hero things like Ghost World or American Splendor, and it doesn’t count any original super hero movies like Hancock or Darkman. Obviously with those two categories added in, the numbers are much higher. Factor in television shows and animated series, and it’s higher still, although when you do that, you lose the spectacle factor I’m talking about.

In the interest of parity, I present to you
the first appearance of the Rhino, from
ASM #41. This was never a great
costume design, although to be fair,
in the 1960s, this was the height
of spectacle and drama.

Put simply, if you’re indignant because the movie is too loud and fast, and focuses on impossible action, then you are either an immigrant from the Moon, new to our ways and customs, or you’re pissing and moaning to justify you not getting it. That’s fine if you don’t, but let me be very clear about this: there will be other super hero movies, and they will always have some component of a vicarious power fantasy in them. That ability to deliver spectacle is one of the reasons why so many people want to see movies based on super heroes they love. But if you don’t like spectacle, and prefer cinema that enriches as it draws back the curtain on a different point-of-view, that’s okay, but please stop reviewing super hero movies. In fact, stop reviewing spectacles altogether.

It reminds me of the people who saw The Avengers without seeing any of the other Marvel movies and complained that they didn’t understand what was going on. I’m a little sympathetic, because no one has ever tried world building with a multi-billion dollar movie franchise before, so, you know, uncharted territory. But now that you do know, what did you expect? And also, how dumb are you, anyway? I really feel sorry for people who can’t enjoy Warner Brothers cartoons, The Three Stooges, and now Super Hero movies. It’s like trying to play with the weird kid in class by showing them your dinosaurs and they look at your plastic dinosaurs and say, “Those aren’t real animals.”

I do think this version of Spider-Man (in this particular movie) is as close to comic book Spider-Man that we’ve ever gotten. There are so many moments plucked from the Ditko and Romita era playbooks that are wonderful to see writ large on the silver screen. The first ten minutes is a jaw-dropping joy to behold, and easily one of the things I’d point to who asks me what’s so great about Spider-Man, anyway? As spectacle, this is everything I’ve ever wanted to see in a Spider-Man project, hands down. And it only took, what? My whole entire life?

I’m not going to defend Amazing Spider-Man 2 in terms of whether or not you found it emotionally lacking. It certainly does. What I am going to do is chalk it up to this movie being aimed at a much younger crowd. Case in point: every teenager that has seen the movie so far, including my staff, and one of my projectionists, who is a dyed-in-the-wool Spider-Man fan from a young age, have loved the movie. They cried when Gwen died, and they love Andrew Garfield’s take on Peter Parker. They love the wisecracking, and they are following the storyline with no problems, no concerns, and no questions. They don’t think anything about the Toby Maguire Spider-Man movies. Most of them haven’t seen them, except my aforementioned Spidey fan in residence.  He made an observation that I missed: one of the other big influences on the movie is the Spider-Man animated cartoons that they’ve been churning out for fifteen years or so. Those cartoons trend young, and that’s who this movie is aimed at: people who are nostalgic for their childhood, watching the “old” Spider-Man cartoons.

But for the number of people who were just kinda "blah" about the movie, let me ask you, and I do this without any rancor: what do you want out of a Spider-Man movie? How do you tell the Spider-Man story that keeps its singular identity and also showcases the weirdness of Spidey's rogues gallery and have it be movie-worthy? What villain do you use that will connect with the widest possible audience? And don't say "Venom," okay, because there's too much backstory to that character to make it work. Not unless, you know, you use the revamped Venom from the Ultimate Spider-Man universe...yeah, see where we're at again?

Would Marvel Studios do a better job with the Spider-Man property than Sony? Maybe, but probably not. Given the small number of Spider-Man villians we've seen in past five movies, and even if they are really shooting to do the Sinister Six in the third movie, one third of these "new" villains will be revamps of the old villains we've already seen.

The point I'm making is this: it's harder than you think it would be. there are certain touchstone moments in the long Spider-Man history that rise above all the rest, and in keeping with the very nature of the character, they are inevitably the big epic tragedy stories. That's central to Spider-Man. The other stories that resonate are actually Peter Parker stories. In some ways, it's the same reason why they've rebooted Batman, starting with the origin: those origins affect and color every story that comes after it. And, unfortunately, in the movies, you've got to underscore the through line by emphasizing the important details in the origin. In Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, it's the death of Uncle Ben. In the new Spider-Man movies, it's the promise Peter makes to Captain Stacey and the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Peter's parents that all ties back to Oscorp.

I say this because (and remember, I just wrote 4000 words explaining how much I like Spider-Man) there's not enough meat in the Spider-Man universe to hang a movie on otherwise. You've either got to stack up a couple of villains, really bring out the soap opera tragedy aspects of Peter Parker's personal life, or heighten one villain to Doctor Doom-like status and have him be an overarching bad guy for three movies.

The first appearance of The Sinister Six:
The Vulture, Electro, Sandman, Doc
Ock, Kraven the Hunter, & Mysterio.
A great, great comic book, but I'm
worried about trying to pull this off
as a movie. We'll soon see, won't we?

Think about it: what exactly would a Spider-Man versus the Vulture movie look like? About twelve minute of video game footage, is what. I could make an argument for a trilogy involving J. Jonah Jameson hiring several villains, such as Mysterio and the Chameleon, to mess with Spider-Man and create doubt in the minds of the public as to him being a hero. Then you fold in Smythe and the Spider-Slayers, the Scorpion, and hell, just for good measure, Man-Wolf. Would you watch those three movies, especially if I wrote them? Of course you would. But would they have the resonance that The Death of Gwen Stacey has had? Yeah, that's what I thought, too.

Considering the quantity and volume of Super Hero movies that have spilled out of Hollywood over the last ten to fifteen years, and how many of them have been better than we expected on up to freaking great, I think it's okay if some of the movies coming out aren't aimed at the neckbeards and man-children of the world. I'm willing to concede that this latest clutch of Spider-Man movies isn't great, as long as you're willing to admit they are better in some ways than the Raimi films. Whenever I come out of a super hero movie thinking, "Well,I would have done that differently," I'm reminded of the terrible mess that Spider-Man 3 was, and then I think to myself, if we'd have seen that movie first, in 2002, before X-Men 2, and Spider-Man 2, and of course, the things that came after
it, like Iron Man, et. al, we would have lost our collective minds at how cool we thought it was (and we would have shrugged and excused all of the nuttiness because, "Hollywood never gets it right, anyway.")

As a sub-genre of film, it has yet to fully define itself. There are indicators of what is possible, and there are zeniths (The Dark Knight) and nadirs (Catwoman). Much like the Supreme Court definition of pornography, we can't define what constitutes a good super hero movie, but we know it when we see it. When the dust settles, I think these new Spider-Man films will have a place in the conversation, if not outright at the table, because they handily fulfill the role of translating the power of the artwork inherent to our understanding of comics into real moving visuals that convey power, grace, and hyper-violence, in equal measure. Hopefully, the generation currently watching the movies on their portable electronic devices will want to have that conversation with us.